How To Make Friends & Influence People
Written: Feb 27 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good lesson, interesting history, decently written
Cons: Not a great book, but how many are?
The Bottom Line: It's not great, but it's not a bad book either. It has it's good points.
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| Darkmistress's Full Review: Ghost Cadet Books |
The Ghost Cadet is yet another book by Elaine Marie Alphin. Ok, so I went on a bender, so what. It’s not all that odd to read three books by the same author in the space of a month. Is it?
Ghost Cadet is an intermediate novel, written for grades 3-7. This one seems to fall right in the middle at about a 5th grade reading level. We have two kids who are being sent to stay with their grandmother over spring break. Their father walked out many years ago and their mother has been more or less killing herself to keep them all in food and clothing. She’s finally met a guy she likes and she wants to spend some alone time with him. Since the kids have a school break coming up she arranges for them to visit their father’s mother who they’ve never met. The girl is completely peeved to have her very important social life interrupted for something so trivial at her mother’s happiness. The boy is not crazy about visiting this grandmother he’s never met because he’s afraid she won’t like him. He’s really not good at making friends. Abandonment issues and all.
So the kids arrive at Gamma’s house and she’s a little distant with them too. Understandable, abandonment issues run in the family. Apparently the father abandoned his parents before he walked out on his kids. She does manage to reach out to the boy tentatively and tell him about a Civil War, oh sorry War Between the States, battlefield very nearby. He goes to the battlefield and meets a boy who wants to be his friend. He’s so excited about this that he’s not even bothered by the fact that this potential friend has been dead for about 200 years. The ghost needs the boy’s help to find a watch that he lost during the battle in which he died. He needs the watch to be returned to his family so that his soul can rest.
This is an Intermediate novel so it’s a little thinner plotwise than either Picture Perfect or Counterfeit Son and it’s a little more "lesson-y." However, as a teaching tool it makes a pretty good read. At its essence, this is a lesson about relationships. The boy is dealing with the relationship he’s had with his sister since their father walked out. He’s also forming a relationship with his grandmother, And he’s learning about being a friend to someone (even thought that someone is dead.) He has to make commitments that require him to bend and break rules (at one point he sneaks out of the house at night, but it’s for a really good reason.) Plus there's the Civil War history.
This isn’t a normal wholehearted recommendation for me. I tend to like my books longer on plot and shorter on didactics, but this one has its use and as usual for Alphin, the characters ring true. Not too long ago I was talking to a customer about her children. She was mostly concerned about the younger daughter who has been diagnosed by her kindergarten teacher as ADHD, but her older boy was having trouble making friends. Given the choice between playing with other children and playing with the computer he’ll take the computer every time. He had, in fact, slunk away from his own birthday party to play computer games. There are some family issues at play (bookseller, bartender, amateur psychologist, it’s all about the same), but her boy seemed to be having problems similar to this boy’s. He didn’t retreat into the computer, but he did retreat into books. He had convinced himself that he had no athletic ability (because he never tried and that does come with practice). It all matched up perfectly and I recommended to the customer that she get the book for her son. Which she did. I hope it helped.
So if you know a kid who is having abandonment issues and/or doesn’t interact well with others this book could be very helpful. Over the course of this story the boy learns to reach out to others despite their lukewarm reception to him. He learns to make and keep promises. And he learns that when people leave him it’s not necessarily his fault. As a teaching tool, this is a really good read. The pacing is good, the characterizations are solid, it is an interesting story. And she includes some good information that explains how things are different now than they have been in the past which explains why the watch is so very important to the ghost.
Overall, this is not a great book, but for its very specific purpose it’s probably one of the best things going. If you’re a middle grade teacher, this should be in your classroom. If you’re looking for a fun read, well Elaine Marie Alphin has written at least two other good books.
Counterfeit Son http://www.epinions.com/content_219083476612
Picture Perfect http://www.epinions.com/content_174271532676
Recommended:
Yes
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Darkmistress
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Location: Concepcion, Chile
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